Norton AntiSpam lets you categorize the email messages that you receive in your email programs into spam email and legitimate email. It filters legitimate email into the Inbox folder and spam email into the Junk folder or the Norton AntiSpam folder.

Norton AntiSpam uses the enterprise-class, spam-filtering technology of Symantec to classify the spam email messages from legitimate email messages. Norton AntiSpam uses a real-time filter delivery mechanism and filters email messages using various local filters at different levels. The local filters classify the email messages as spam or legitimate. If the local filters classify the email message as legitimate, Norton AntiSpam collects information such as signature and URL hashes of the email message. Norton AntiSpam then sends this information to the Symantec Web server for additional scrutiny.


When the email message is classified as spam, Norton AntiSpam changes the subject of the email message and sends it to your email client. The email client identifies the change in the subject of the email message and moves it to the Junk folder or the Norton AntiSpam folder.

The Norton AntiSpam local filters use Whitelist technique, Blacklist technique, and patented filtering technology to classify email messages as spam or legitimate. For these filters to work efficiently, Norton AntiSpam requires antispam definition updates at regular intervals through LiveUpdate. These updates contain signature information of spam and legitimate email messages. The updates also contain any new rule that Symantec creates to filter spam email messages.

Norton AntiSpam uses predefined email rules and the user-defined Allowed List and Blocked List, to expedite the scanning of email. It accepts email messages from the list of allowed email senders and blocks email messages from the list of blocked email senders. Norton AntiSpam also automatically imports the lists of addresses from supported email programs. It helps you keep your list of allowed email senders in sync with your current address books.